best options for erasing thumb drive mac and windows

Best Options For Erasing Thumb Drive And Windows Software That Requires

Some Windows laptops have device encryption enabled by default.

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Learn more Photo: Sarah Kobos Electronics Computers How to Securely Wipe Your Computer, Phone, or Tablet Published September 10, 2020 Your guide Thorin Klosowski Share this review Your computer, phone, or tablet holds all kinds of personal information about you, and before you sell, return, recycle, or donate it, you should make sure to delete all of that information correctly.

On most devices, wiping your data securely is pretty straightforward, and doing so can prevent your data from being recovered by someone you would rather not have it.

How you do this depends on which operating system you have and what type of storage drive your device has.

Best Options For Erasing Thumb Drive And Windows Software That Requires

Before you wipe a computer, make sure that you have a backup of any files you need and deactivate any software that requires doing so.

For Macs, Apple recommends logging out of any iCloud services, including iTunes and iMessages.

On Windows, this information is harder to find than it should be, but the easiest way is to open the Defragment and Optimize Drives tool (type defragment into the search menu in the taskbar).

On a Mac, click the Apple logo and then About this Mac, and select the Storage tab.

The entry typically says solid state or flash storage for a solid-state drive (SSD), whereas for a mechanical hard drive it says hard disk drive.

The following directions for wiping a computer will work with any system running Windows 10, as well as most Macs.

If you have an older copy of Windows or if you like to get into the weeds with different file-deletion methods, a third-party tool like Dban is your best option.

The research Collapse all If you have a solid-state drive, start with encryption Wipe and reset your computer Smartphones and tablets If you have a solid-state drive, start with encryption If you purchased your computer in the past few years, it probably has a solid-state drive.

But the downside of the technology is that securely deleting files from an SSD is very hard.

SSDs use a technique called wear leveling to prolong life, but a side effect of this process is that data can remain on a drive even after youve erased it.

Instead of using special software to erase an SSDs contents, youre better off encrypting the drive, which employs a mathematical process to muddle up the data using a passkey that only you have.

Without the key, files on the drive look like gibberisheven if someone succeeds in recovering files, that person still wont be able to open them.

This is something we recommend doing for every computer with an SSD, even if youre not selling it.

You can also encrypt mechanical hard drives for the same reason, but the process takes a particularly long time, and its easier to do a good-enough job of removing data on mechanical drives.

Chromebooks usually use solid-state storage, but Google enables encryption by default, so if youre resetting a Chromebook, you can skip this section.

Windows If you have a Windows computer, encrypting your storage drive can be a little tricky and depends on which version of Windows your computer has and what components you have installed.

Best Options For Erasing Thumb Drive Mac And Windows